Hey podcast listeners. I’m Rae Ritter, Director of Client Service + Marketing at LISI, and I will be your host for this episode of LISI’s, All the Things podcast. On this week’s episode of One More Thing, I chat with Diana Lauritson, Senior Manager of Marketing and Business Development at Hogan Lovells, and Matt Kurnick, Digital Communications Manager at Foley & Lardner. We recently presented a webinar to the Legal Marketing Association Mid-Atlantic Region on the topic, “Your Website is Bad For Business and How Lack of Cross-Functional Collaboration led to the Fail of Modern Law Firm Websites.”

In the webinar, we probably could have talked on the topic for much longer. And on this podcast, we share one more thing we would have covered in the webinar about collaboration on websites and other projects and how your website may actually be bad for business if you don’t bring in different perspectives. So here is One More Thing. This week’s episode of LISI’s, All the Things podcast. Check it out.

Rae Ritter:

I’m Rae Ritter, Director of Client Service + Marketing at LISI, and today I have Diana Lauritson and Matt Kurnick for our LISI, One More Thing podcast. Today we’re going to talk about a recent program we did for the Mid-Atlantic Region webinar in January. The program was called “Your Website Is Bad for Business, How Lack of Cross-Functional Collaboration led to the Fail of Modern Law Firm Websites.” And before we dive in, Diana and Matt, can you introduce yourself? Diana, why don’t you go first?

Diana Lauritson:

Sure. My name’s Diana Lauritson. I’m currently the senior manager of marketing and business development at Hogan Lovells, and I’ve been working in the law firm business development and marketing space for over a decade. And before that I spent about eight years in politics, public affairs, government relations, and other business development rules.

Rae Ritter:

Thank you.

Matt Kurnick:

Rae, thanks for having me. My name’s Matt Kurnick. I’m the manager of digital communications at Foley & Lardner. I’ve been there for about seven years. It’s the one and only law firm in my career so far. And I’ve been in the digital space for about 15 years working on various websites and social media and other extremely public and digital properties.

Rae Ritter:

Thanks. So on our call, we’ve got decades of marketing and legal marketing experience. And before we dive in, I wanted to give a little bit more information about the genesis of the program that we did for LMA last month. It actually started at an LMA conference in the Mid-Atlantic region where I think Diana, you were just, I don’t know, we just came up to each other and started talking about websites. We were networking.

Diana Lauritson:

We were networking.

Rae Ritter:

Good for us to do. Because we actually… We’ve both worked at the same firm, but we didn’t work there at the same time. So we hadn’t met… I think we met in Las Vegas, but we hadn’t met too many times in person. And we started talking about websites. And I think you said that you were navigating a firm’s website and just what you saw seemed so counterintuitive to what you thought that website was trying to accomplish.

Diana Lauritson:

Yeah, it’s really interesting because, and I don’t remember exactly how we got on the subject, but I think we were talking about how firm websites can just say a lot about a firm that a firm might not be aware of. And I had mentioned that I’ve looked at firm websites and they have influenced whether I’ve wanted to work at a firm because I could look at them and say, ooh, I don’t know how innovative this firm is, or based on their website, it gives me an idea about how they collaborate behind the scenes, just how things are laid out, how creative their marketing department might be, which can totally be judgey. But it’s just something that over the years I’ve kind of paid attention to having worked at four different law firms and seeing different processes and even just other industries where I’ve had some insight into how websites have come together behind the scenes. So somehow we got on that and decided we were going to do a webinar on this.

Rae Ritter:

Great idea. And your background is more on the BD side, so you’re coming at this from a different angle. And then you asked Matt to join us for the program?

Diana Lauritson:

Yeah, which is interesting because I used to work at Foley with Matt for a few years and always thought really highly of him and he manages the website at our previous firm. And so it was kind of interesting that I used to work at a firm with you, well, I guess you left and I started right around that time and then had worked with Matt and it just seemed like a nice way to get everyone to collaborate with everyone.

Rae Ritter:

And Matt, since you manage your law firm’s website in-house, you really bring another perspective to this conversation that we have.

Matt Kurnick:

Yeah, I mean I think when we talk about the meaningful cross-collaboration and then also ensuring that your website says the thing you mean it to say, this is the stuff I live and breathe every day. So I’m constantly working with people who are in similar shoes to Diana, making sure that we hear what they have to say. And then also when we’re just maintaining the website on a day-to-day basis, we’re trying to ensure that each little change, each little update is making sure that we’re continuing to communicate the things we want and that the site is representing the firm in the way that we need it to.

Rae Ritter:

So one thing that I think is interesting when we were planning for that program is, what was the name of the program going to be? And the starting title…the beginning of the title is “Your Website is Bad for Business.” And that’s a pretty strong statement, and I think we went back and forth, is that too alarmist? And the answer we ended with is no because many websites truly are bad for business because they may not be saying what they intend to say. And then in our program, we went much further into how that cross-functional collaboration can really help resolve that.

So on this podcast, the idea is to come back at what is the one more thing, if we had another 10 or 15 minutes on our program on the webinar, what else would we have said? Or for the folks who haven’t heard that program, what is something else that you’d want to add? Diana, do you want to go next?

Diana Lauritson:

Yeah, I mean, for one, I have marketing and business development in my title, and a lot of times on the marketing side that seems to encompass websites. And so on the one hand I felt like there were things that I could say where I had a perspective just based on the attorneys that I work with and being able to give input about what I think, how I use a website, how I’ve used them at firms. But it’s also just hearing you and Matt give your examples of what you do every day in your jobs. It’s easy to see why it would seem like you want just the website or the digital marketing people involved and not necessarily bringing in the business development people. And so I thought it was important. I learned a lot more about what my role should be when I was giving the webinar and preparing for the webinar because at face value it just is natural that you and Matt would have a lot more to say about the ins and outs and the technical aspects of the website. So that was kind of one takeaway.

But then the other thing I thought about, and I think some of it is because I’m reading a book right now called Smarter Collaboration by Heidi Gardner, and it talks about cross-functional collaboration, which was a really core component of our webinar. And just reflecting on it a few weeks later, you could take out website from our webinar and really just talk about collaboration and why it’s important to help break down silos, and working with people who work in different teams or on different teams or departments or with different levels of experience, different roles, and responsibilities in their day jobs and why that’s so important. And reading the book now, and I haven’t even made my way through the book yet, so I’m sure I’ll have a lot more enlightening thoughts after I finish the book, but I just thought we’re definitely onto something with our webinar because it could really apply to so many areas.

Matt Kurnick:

Yeah, Diana, I think that idea of taking the website name… The website word out of the title and just talk about the importance of cross-collaboration. I think about our time working together. I think about some of just the day-to-day work that I’m part of. And I think when you bring people with multiple different perspectives from different areas of expertise to the table, you generally always going to get a better product. I think that’s a really, really awesome point.

Rae Ritter:

I actually recently wrote a blog post about collaboration for an upcoming conference called Follow Friday, and I thought about our program a lot in preparing for that and the reasons to collaborate. And it’s funny because in my mind, one of the reasons that I noted in that blog post was to strengthen your relationships is one reason to collaborate because I think it’s safe to say that we have a stronger relationship with each other as a result of working together on that webinar. And there was a lot of hours involved. It took a lot of time and effort, so it came at a price essentially. But that’s another benefit of collaboration. It’s just strengthening your relationships, not just the project that you’re working on.

Matt Kurnick:

And one of the things that I thought of after our presentation was that point about taking feedback or collaborating outside of the project or maybe alongside the project. I think oftentimes we get into a project and we have a plan and we want to stick to it all the way through and we have our project team and we want to stick with that group. And sometimes you’ll get interjections or you’ll hear really valuable feedback from people who aren’t in that core team or on that core team. And sometimes that’s some of the most important stuff you’re going to hear and it’s going to inform the future of the project or the direction of the project. I think this idea of being open and being flexible and being interested in being fluid throughout the course of a project is something I’ve thought about quite a bit lately as a result of some of our discussions.

Rae Ritter:

Matt, have you ever had folks in other departments who are thinking, hey, I’m cross-functional, I’m going to collaborate, and they’re giving you their ideas and their two cents. My nephew is in school and learning about this and we need to do whatever. Has that kind of thing ever happened?

Matt Kurnick:

Oh yeah. So one of my favorite instances is one of our partners comes to us and says, I know someone who runs a digital agency, and that usually throws up a red flag for me. But typically when we have that discussion, we end up having a really, really productive kind of project or a court stream of work and are able to talk through, okay, what do you really want to accomplish? How can we help get you there? And that sort of thing. And it typically ends up being really, really productive.

Rae Ritter:

I know looking way back, way, way back in the beginning of Twitter and Instagram, attorneys saying, I think we need to do this, I think we need to do this. And I think there’s a really good time and place to use all these different types of tools, but I think the answer always has to be an educated one. Asking more questions, do you dive right in? Just because kids in college and undergrad learning marketing are saying this is how it works in the consumer world, I think we need to think really carefully before applying those same rules to services marketing, particularly legal services.

Matt Kurnick:

Yeah, and I think to that point too, we always try to ladder up to a goal or the firm strategy or department strategy or something like that. And when you’re able to do that, you can take some of these maybe unexpected inquiries or unexpected asks and really to your point, kind of make the educated decisions and push it in a direction that’s beneficial to the person who came to you with it, but also to the firm as a whole.

Diana Lauritson:

I think some of it has to do with educating lawyers about our role and in some ways collaboration helps to educate them. The more that they work with you, the more in some ways that you’re qualifying yourself through the ideas that you bring to the table, your ability to take projects to the next level. I think that’s always helpful. But you’re always going to have those times where…this is a real-life example, and this was a long time ago where I had a lawyer come and said that we needed an app. He had said, we need an app. And this was 10 years ago. And I said, well, an app for what? And he’s like, I don’t know. He goes, my niece is always talking about these apps on her phone. I feel like we should have an app. And I said, do you know what an app is? And he’s like, no, I have no idea. But I think we need one.

And so there’s always those fun times, those situations will happen. And I think education is a big component of us, not only letting lawyers know what our roles are and how we can help support them, but also being able to turn conversations around. We want ideas, we want lawyers to feel comfortable to come to us and be able to contribute, but we also need to be able to redirect things a little bit and turn the conversation around.

Matt Kurnick:

Well Diana, sorry, I would suggest that education piece is not exclusive to lawyers. I think it’s within a BD and marketing department. If you’re going to talk about cross-function and you’re working with HR or you’re recruiting staff… The more that everybody knows what everybody else is doing, and how to contribute, just the better.

Rae Ritter:

Another thing I wanted to add is the program was called Your Website is Bad for Business. And what we meant by that was the business, the bottom line, are you retaining talent? Are you attracting talent? Are you profitable? All these types of things. And maybe that app could have done something positive, but if it wasn’t thought out, it could take a lot of time, effort, money to create something that doesn’t really have a high return, or maybe it could.

But it was important I think at the time and every time to ask this question, what are we trying to do? And this goes back to Matt, what you said, ladder up to the firm goals. If this thing that we’re talking about launching or this functionality on a website or whatever doesn’t align with the firm goals, you really have to take a close look at that and decide, well, are we doing it because the chair of the firm likes this and they’re insisting on it, or are we doing it because it’s good for business? So lets kind of circle back to the one more thing concept. If there was one more thing that you wanted to share with the folks who did or didn’t listen to the webinar, what would you add?

Diana Lauritson:

I think my big point throughout the webinar was about cross-functional collaboration and bringing in people from other areas. And I think my takeaway kind of talked about that. Part of it I stole from Matt, really which is the website being a sum of thousands of big and small decisions, but adding on, collaborating with a cross-functional team helps you make decisions in a way that caters to your intended audience, but you also get all of the benefits that come along with that collaboration, which might not be realized and which go beyond the fact that you put a successful website together. Like you said, it could be that we’re strengthening relationships with the team. And so just on that theme, one thing I’m really learning more and more is that with collaboration, it’s something that you have to invest in. I think in its most basic form, when I hear the word collaborate, I think, oh, that means we work together.

But just working with people does not mean you’re collaborating with them. And I had brought up during the webinar that it’s easier to go it alone because it’s easier when you have full control of the creative process and what you’re going to do because you might think, well, I know more about this, this is my day job. I read about this stuff. I know more than some of these other people. But that’s not really going into a project like this in the spirit of collaboration. If you are working with other people just to put your own idea forward, you’re not collaborating. I think collaboration requires going into a situation, wanting to listen, and really wanting to learn from the other people around you and to have an understanding of what perspectives they’re bringing to the table and how that can help enhance what you’re doing rather than just going in because you want to make sure that your ideas get to the top of the pile.

So that’s something, again, I’m all about collaboration right now because I’m reading this book, and so I’ve been exploring a little bit more about what that means. But I think a good takeaway is to go into collaboration with open mind, open ears, and really with the intention of listening and learning.

Matt Kurnick:

Diana, I think that last point about being intent, having intention of being intentional, and being proactive. So many times the work can be done by yourself in a room, but unless you proactively go find people to collaborate with, that’s the way to do it. I think this idea of intention and proactivity is really important on the collaboration front.

Rae Ritter:

Matt, what was your one more thing concept?

Matt Kurnick:

So I think my one more thing gets back to this idea of a website or an app or a blog or whatever the digital product is or project you’re working on, just never being finished. And I think this idea of talking about laddering up to strategy or meeting the needs of a particular partner, those things change over time. And so the product or the website can change with it. I think this idea that if you don’t get it right, if it’s not saying the thing you want it to say when it goes live and it’s fresh, change it. That’s the beauty of these things is nothing is set in stone. You can shift it, you can mold it to be what it needs to be, and those needs change over time.

So if your strategy dictates one thing when the website goes live and a year later the strategy dictates a different thing, shift the website, mold it to meet the new objectives. And then even if those objectives don’t change, but perceptions change or society or the marketplace changes, you can continue to evolve the website with those things to make it feel and look current and communicate the things that you want it to and that you need it to serve your business the way it needs to.

Rae Ritter:

Yeah, that’s something we say to our clients all the time about the website’s never really done, you’re just always striving to make it the best that it is at that time. And I think my one more thing commentary is, review your website routinely and look at it through today’s lens, which is certainly different from five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. But even there could be things happening in the news, in the world that change the way you look at things. And one example that we talked about, I don’t think we talked about on the webinar, but we talked about in our planning, what if you create a website and there’s some visual on the homepage that shows turbulent ocean or something like that, or some kind of weather situation that shows how your lawyers are proactive and turbulent and something like that. I don’t know.

Diana Lauritson:

Weathering the storm.

Rae Ritter:

Weathering the storm, thank you. That’s what I’m going for.

Matt Kurnick:

Or navigating the seas.

Rae Ritter:

Yeah, there’s some way that’s illustrating something that’s meaningful to your firm, and then along comes a big hurricane and it’s devastating hurricane to perhaps your particular region or another one. And all of a sudden there is a reason that the thing that you chose that was meaningful and interesting is all of a sudden very insensitive and you couldn’t have predicted it and you didn’t cause it. But it’s important to review your website through today’s lens and that also goes with other types of visuals. And Matt, I know we went back and forth talking about all kinds of stock photography issues as well. Something that might look okay to you when you’re creating the website, may not look okay when you’re reviewing it later because something has come to light in some way. Did you have other examples on the photography, Matt?

Matt Kurnick:

Well, I think stock photography is a really deep rabbit hole and so many of us use that to populate our website. And I guess my one more thing on that is just to be incredibly thoughtful and careful with the images you select because what one person might think is totally innocent and sort of benign, another can read something totally different from. And so it’s just one of those things that is a regular part of the job and we do several times a day and it’s one of those things that you just need to be pretty careful with each time. Make sure that the thing that is depicted in the image is what it needs to be.

Rae Ritter:

And then also that brings us back to that cross-collaboration and bringing in other points of view and perspective because maybe as the agency or as the digital marketing person, you might not see something the same way as your BD manager sees it, who’s more in tune with our lawyers and our clients. So it’s important to bring in all these different players because they may see something in that stock photography that you thought was fine, but you don’t know this about the client or our target or whomever. The website’s never done. That’s why it’s great. We can always update it. If you have a printed piece of marketing collateral, you have to pay to get it printed again, but it’s really pretty simple to update a photo on the site. So Diana and Matt, thank you so much for joining us on the One More Thing podcast. It was really a pleasure working with you and preparing that program and I appreciate you coming back again for a little more time on this one.

Matt Kurnick:

Thanks for having us, Rae.

Diana Lauritson:

Thank you. Yeah, definitely appreciate it and look forward to listening to the next One More Thing.

Rae Ritter:

All right, you too. All right, thanks folks. Have a great day.

You have been listening to All the Things, the podcast from Legal Internet Solutions Incorporated, where we bring you all the things, whether it’s three things we learned hearing from a legal marketing insider and ask me anything session or that one more thing we’ve been dying to tell you all month long but couldn’t, that’s All the Things. Our next episode will be out in a week wherever you get your podcasts, and you can join us for the live events every Friday at 12:30 Eastern on our LinkedIn channel for our liv stream where we bring you All the Things live.